The producer of RE:ORC talks about the why of this title, and the future of the RE series
Question: Did you set the game in Raccoon City to strongly anchor it to the rest of the series?
Capcom Producer: For us, it's about a new direction for RE. It's kind of a spin-off. That's why it doesn't have a number. It's not necessarily entirely in the canon, but it's totally immersed in the mythology.
Question: Why did you choose this part of the timeline?
Capcom Producer: Raccoon City is emblematic of the series for players, and it's well adapted to this genre of gameplay--the design, the roads, the urban structure.
Question: Why a team-based third person shooter?
Capcom Producer: As you know it's our fifteenth anniversary, which is a long time for a video game series... bottom of this answer cut off by watermark. Some players came to the series when it made a turn towards action (still with horror elements, though). This design led the series towards TPS. How do you attract shooter fans? ...
... continued... Coop, Multiplayer... These are particularly important aspects. So it was important for us to do them. I want to clarify something, even though it's a shooter, there are still tons of horror elements.
Question: Why use an external developer? Why Slant Six?
Capcom Producer: The idea came up when we were working on Lost Planet 2. We didn't have any other teams internally to work on it. Western studios are known for their ease of development, and in terms of gameplay, this genre. Slant Six... we just bought a studio in Vancouver (Blue Castle) and when we were looking for external partners... Blue Castle talked with Slant Six, and they were well known for their online games and their coding skills. We met them and they were big RE fans. A good starting point!
Question: Will projects (the words here are "Will these components...") from now on be primarily Western developed?
Capcom Producer: Shooters are very popular in US/Europe. RE is still popular in Japan. Thus we've continued with this episode to try to interest Japanese players. Besides, this isn't just a TPS game... covered by watermark...
Question: Who worked on ("How did you work on...") the artistic design for the project? It seems darker than the last ones.
Capcom Producer: All the artistic designs came from my team and I. Here we wanted something dirtier. In previous games we spent a lot of time working on lighting and shadows (RE5 for example). Because it takes place at night, this game requires us to look at lighting. It's a natural evolution for our work. Because of the limited capabilities of the PS1, it was impossible to go very far with this concept. Besides that, there's also blood and gore! In RE we can't push it like in Dead Rising... which views itself as a comedy.
Question: Are zombies a part of Capcom's DNA?
Capcom Producer: Obviously! A huge number of the creators of the series are zombie fans, and they wanted to make them move realistically... more realistically than before. For example if you hurt a zombie but don't kill it, he will attract others who come to put it in pieces... We imagined some unique behaviours for this game.
Question: Survival horror doesn't sell very well, except for Dead Space 2. Is going towards a full shooter a natural evolution for the series?
Capcom Producer: In terms of sales, survival horror isn't as popular as it once was. Having said that, I love Dead Space. Besides this game, I am working on a survival horror game. We aren't making this game to run away from survival horror, but to bring new challenges to the world of Resident Evil. I wouldn't say it's a natural evolution as much as I always wanted to do something a little different.
Question: In the survival horror genre, Dead Space succeeds at doing better than most of the founders of the genre, including Resident Evil. So expectations have been raised...
Capcom Producer: We have to work harder because of titles like Dead Space, to be as interesting as possible. Plus, the franchise as a whole has its own unique problems that must be solved. Our fans are also our critics, for example with RE5. Also I wouldn't directly compare RE and DS. But it's always great to see the genre be popular, it's inspiring. Yeah, there's a future for the genre!
